


look forward into the sun

by stillusesapencil



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Fluff, F/M, M/M, Monster Hunters, Photography, Road Trip, an odd combination of heavy-handed aesthetic and Steve's snark, attempts at 80s aesthetic, bed sharing, how slow can it be if it's only eight chapters, i'm doing my best okay, listen, look just go read it please, slowish burn, steve has some emotional issues and it's going to take him this whole damn fic to figure it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-12 14:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15341412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillusesapencil/pseuds/stillusesapencil
Summary: “So let me get this straight. You want to go on a summer road trip, with your ex-boyfriend ex-bully and sometimes chauffer of your younger brothers, who has a job, by the way, and hunt monsters?”Nancy sighs. “Yes, Steve. You got it right.”Steve shakes his head. “We can’t just pack up and go like that!”“Why not?” Nancy asks, frowning a little.“Because—because—because something could happen!”“Somethingalwayshappens,” says Jonathan.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this at the beginning of the summer and now I'm finally posting the first chapter. 
> 
> All mistakes are mine, characters are Netflix/Duffer brothers. If they were mine, this would be canon already. 
> 
> Will update regularly.

Nancy and Jonathan are waiting for him in the parking lot. Nancy is sitting on top of the trunk, and Jonathan is leaning against it, arms folded over his chest. For a minute, Steve considers turning on his heel and going back inside, but that won’t make them leave. If anything, they’ll stay there until he inevitably has to go home. Nancy Wheeler is stubborn like that. So instead, he walks straight to them, stopping just in front of them, raising his chin in greeting.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“We came to see you, Steve,” Nancy says. 

“How was work?” Jonathan asks.

Steve shrugs. “Fine, I guess. Just more of the same.”

Nancy gets that little furrow between her brows, one Steve knows intimately as her “concerned but not saying anything” look.

“It gets the bills paid,” he adds hastily, like that will help.

“What bills, Steve?” she says quietly. 

Steve is still living in his parent’s house, working for his father, just like he never wanted. Slowly slipping into the tired routine he promised himself he’d never have. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, crossing his arms and uncrossing them, running one hand through his hair.

“We know you hate it, c’mon, man,” Jonathan says.

Steve shrugs again. “So what are you doing here?”

Nancy trades a look with Jonathan, then says, “Would you like to come to dinner?”

He nods. “Sure. Yeah. Let’s do dinner.”

So they go to dinner, not at Hammonds, because there’s much too big a chance of running into everybody’s siblings, and Steve somehow feels like this is something that should not be intruded upon by five or six gangly kids. 

Instead, they go to a diner downtown, and Steve sits on one side of the booth, and Nancy and Jonathan sit on the other. Nancy leans against Jonathan’s side, and Steve feels like he’s intruding on a private moment, and he quickly becomes very determinedly absorbed in the menu. 

It used to be his side she leaned upon.

It’s not that Steve is jealous, exactly. No, it’s been a year and a half since they broke up. He got over his jealousy a long time ago. He’s gotten used to seeing Jonathan holding Nancy’s hand, to Jonathan at the Wheeler’s house, to seeing Nancy look at Jonathan the same way she used to look at him. And he and Jonathan are on friendly terms. No, it’s nothing to do with jealousy or vengeful feelings of a jilted ex.

No. It’s that Steve is still in love with Nancy Wheeler.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a dress shirt before.”

Steve snaps out of his reverie. “Huh?”

Jonathan motions in the general direction of Steve’s chest. “Your shirt. You don’t normally dress like that.”

Steve looked down at his white button down, tucked into khakis. “Oh. Yeah. Dress code.”

“It’s not bad,” Jonathan adds softly.

“Dustin calls it my ‘boring-ass dad clothes.’”

Nancy smiles. “Mike says Dustin loves you.”

Steve smiles at the thought of the lanky boy and his shaggy curls. Both Steve and Mrs. Henderson had tried to convince him to cut them, but Dustin refused. _Chicks dig the hair, Steve._ He still put four puffs of the Farrah Fawcett spray in his hair every morning. “Yeah. He’s a good kid.” 

“They all love you,” Jonathan says. “Will is always happy after you guys hang out.”

Steve smiles down at his menu as the waitress comes to take their order. Once the waitress is gone, the three of them are left in uncomfortable silence. They haven’t really hung out, not like this. For a long time, Nancy tried to give him space, tried to let him heal from everything, and then he graduated, and it was summer. Over the summer they’d spent a little time together, but only with three or four or seven children in tow. Steve had multiple pool parties at his house, and there was the fourth of July when he and Jonathan set up a fireworks display in the Byer’s front yard, but then it was fall again, Nancy and Jonathan’s senior year. Steve started working for his dad, because he knew his grades weren’t strong enough to send him anywhere decent, and his dad offered him a steady job with insurance and all that adult stuff. And now it was May, and Steve was pretty locked into his routine of work and boring things, and Nancy and Jonathan were both going to college in the fall. 

Steve clears his throat just as Nancy says, “Steve—”

She stops, and motions him to continue. 

He shakes his head. “No, go ahead.”

Nancy trades a look with Jonathan, who rubs a comforting hand on her back. “Steve, we’ve been thinking.” She stops, considering her next words. That’s Nancy, always clam and collected, calculating her next move. It was what got her such good grades all this time—her ability to think through what she says before she says it. Steve clearly lacks that ability. 

“Go on, tell him, Nance,” says Jonathan.

Nancy collects herself. “We’ve all seen what the Upside Down can do. We’ve all seen the monsters. And we’ve been thinking—Jonathan and I—” she motions between them “—and we think there might be other beasts out there. From the Upside Down.”

Steve cocks his head, considers that. Possible, yes. Probable? _Maybe_. 

“There’s a…network of sorts,” she continues, “Monster hunters.”

Steve snorts. “You mean like the people who hunt Bigfoot?”

“ _No_ ,” Nancy says, annoyed, “I mean real monsters, Steve. Like we fought.” She digs in her purse and pulls out several newspaper clippings and a map with red circles scattered over it. She lays them flat on the table. 

Jonathan says, “It looks like it’s connected to government stuff. Just like it was here.”

Steve picks up a newspaper, reads the headline. _Girl missing, residents report ‘monster sightings.’_ “How did you find all this?”

The waitress walks up, balancing three plates on her arms. “Are we all good here?” she asks uncertainly of the three, and Steve is suddenly aware that he had been leaning closer to the other two. 

He sits back in his seat, smiles at the waitress. “I think we’re good, thanks.”

She smiles back, just on the edge of flirty. Steve looks away from her. 

When she is gone and they’ve all had time to take a few bites, Nancy says, “Murray Bauman helped us.”

“A very astute man,” Jonathan adds. “Figured out we hunt the monsters, offered us some connections.” 

“We’re thinking of going this summer. Monster hunting.”

Steve stops chewing the bite of fried chicken in his mouth. He swallows, hard, and it scrapes on the way down. “This summer?” he finally manages.

“Yeah,” Jonathan says. “The three of us.”

“You want—you want me?”

They nod in sinc.

Steve leans back in his seat. “So let me get this straight. You want to go on a summer road trip, with your ex-boyfriend ex-bully and sometimes chauffer of your younger brothers, who has a job, by the way, and hunt monsters?”

Nancy sighs. “Yes, Steve. You got it right.”

Steve shakes his head. “We can’t just pack up and go like that!”

“Why not?” Nancy asks, frowning a little.

“Because—because—because something could happen!”

“Something _always_ happens,” Jonathan says, heavy and tired. 

“Do you really want to be stuck in this suburban mediocrity for the rest of your life?” She says it quietly, and Steve looks at her over the table, at her earnest, intense blue eyes. He looks at Jonathan and the determined set of his jaw, his hand wrapped around a fork so tightly the veins are standing out. 

Steve looks down at his own plate, at the half-eaten mashed potatoes and green beans. He sees his own hands, the sleeves of the white button down. He had wanted more than this. It had seemed to him that Nancy had offered him that, with her determination to not become her parents. From the state of his life now, it seemed she _had_ been the only thing keeping him from turning into his father. But that couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t let it be true.

Yet here she was again, extending the chance of _more_. 

“I’ll do it.”

Nancy’s brows shoot up, and she smiles, surprised and a bit breathless. Jonathan smiles too, a softer and more timid thing, and his eyes flick from Nancy to Steve and back. 

“Yeah. I’ll do it. Good. Great.” Instantly there are a hundred other thoughts—his job, his father, the Party, travelling with his ex _who he’s still in love with_ , just by the way, and her boyfriend—but all of those can be dealt with at a later time. “When do we leave?”

“We were thinking right after graduation,” she says, tugging the map from underneath Jonathan’s plate, “and most of the places we’d go are up here.” She circles the northeast with her finger. “Montauk is the place that interests me the most. There’s reports of kidnappings on the regular.”

The map has a trip roughly outlined, cities circled with numbers by them. “What’s with the numbers?” 

She pushes the stack of newspaper clippings at him, and he sees they all have numbers in the margins, corresponding with the numbers on the map. 

“Huh. Okay. Whose car are we taking?”

“Mine,” Jonathan says. 

“Yours? But mine is—” He swallows his words. “Yeah. Okay. Your call, man.”

Jonathan looks at him quietly, and Steve thinks there’s a lot going on behind those eyes. Pride, determination. They are also a nice shade of light brown. 

Steve quickly focuses on the map again. “So, uh, yeah. Let’s do it. Just, keep me posted, you know, all that stuff.”

“We will,” says Nancy.

As they finish dinner, the awkwardness between them eases. They catch each other up a bit, as much as catching up can be done in a small town like Hawkins. Still, it’s nice to hear that Nancy’s going to be valedictorian and Jonathan’s still taking pictures from the lips of the people themselves, instead of through the gossip grapevine. 

When they are about to part ways, Nancy snags him by the wrist. “Thanks, Steve. It means a lot to me—to both of us.”

A sad smile tugs at Steve’s mouth. “Anything for you, Nance.”

She shakes her head, letting go of his wrist. “You’re a good man, Steve Harrington.”

If it were a different time, this is the part where Steve would kiss her and tell her he loves her. But it’s not a different time, so he just dips his head and shuffles to his car.

He sits in the car for a moment before thunking his head onto the steering wheel. Oh God. What has he gotten himself into?

*

Two weeks later, Nancy and Jonathan walk the stage to get their diplomas. Steve doesn’t go. He is at home, stuffing as many t-shirts and jeans as he can into a single dufflebag. He stares at the bag, considering. What the hell did you take monster hunting? Normally they are defending themselves from the monsters, not seeking them out. He doesn’t own a gun, but he takes a handful of lighters and pocket knives. He adds his earnings from the past year. Finally, he writes a note and leaves it on the kitchen table. Hopefully, his father will see it in the morning. 

_I quit._

Simple, to the point. He’ll deal with the consequences when he gets back. 

He drives to Dustin’s. The kid answers the door, already grinning. 

“Hey, Steve. You ready for our totally fun-filled exhilarating adventure night?”

“Oh boy,” Steve says, stepping inside. “Whatcha got planned?”

Dustin’s smile widens, if that’s even possible, and he starts listing off the things they’re going to do. Man, he loves this kid. It’s fun, it really is. He beats Dustin in Atari and they watch several movies and Mrs. Henderson makes him enough food to last a lifetime. 

“So you leave tomorrow, huh?” Dustin says, as the hour ticks later. 

Steve is falling asleep on the couch, but he snaps awake at Dustin’s voice. God, he’s getting old. “Huh?”

“Tomorrow. You leave.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“What’re you _actually_ doing? I know that touring stuff is bullshit.” 

“We’re…we’re monster hunting, buddy. Finding more stuff like the demidogs. Taking it down.”

Dustin sobers, looking at his hands. “Sounds dangerous.”

Shrugging, he says, “Eh, I mean, it can’t be that bad.”

“You be safe, Steve,” Dustin says seriously. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Steve sits up all the way and digs into his pocket. “Listen, I want you to have this.” He holds up the key to his car. 

Dustin stares at his, mouth open. “Your car?”

“Yeah. Just for the summer. Take care of it for me while I’m gone.”

A smile spreads on Dustin’s face. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious! Take the car. When you take girls out you can have a sweet ride.”

Dustin takes the key, cradling it in his palm. “Holy shit,” he says reverently.  
“Don’t…don’t go too fast or anything. Don’t wreck it.” Steve is having rapid-fire second thoughts. “And for fuck’s sake, _don’t let Max drive!_ ” 

Dustin’s grinning, turning into the personification of sunshine. “Oh don’t worry, Steve, I’ll take good care of it. Oh my God, thank you so much!” 

Steve grins. “Sure buddy, no problem.”

The two of them fall asleep soon after. In the morning, Steve wakes early and tiptoes around to gather his shoes and bag. He tries to make it out without waking anyone, but Mrs. Henderson stops him at the door, holding a Ziploc bag of sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies. 

“Be safe, Steven,” she says, and pulls his shoulder down to kiss his cheek. 

“Yes ma’am.” 

Nancy and Jonathan are waiting outside. 

“Ready?” she asks.

He gives her a confident nod. 

The last thing Steve does before leaving Hawkins is take the nail-studded bat out of the trunk of his car. It had stayed in the trunk of his car since the first time he used it. Like Jonathan said, something _always_ happens. 

Nancy smiles at him and hands him a thermos of coffee. Gratefully, he takes a long swallow. It burns his tongue on the way down. He won’t be able to taste anything right for the rest of the day. 

They drive toward the rising sun, and as they pass the Hawkins sign at the edge of town, Nancy says, “We made it.” She twists to smile at Steve, then at Jonathan. Jonathan smiles too, and then Nancy leans over to kiss him. 

It’s a lingering kiss, framed by the morning sunlight. Steve coughs, and it takes him a moment to tear his eyes away. 

“Can you keep your eyes on the road, please?” he asks, but without malice. 

Nancy giggles softly, and Jonathan straightens in his seat with a smile. “Sure, Steve.” 

As Hawkins shrinks behind them, Steve looks forward into the sun and thinks, _We’re actually doing this._ And then, _Holy shit._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don’t see anything,” Steve says.
> 
> Nancy reads off her pad. “The reports are of things in the night. Moaning, creeping shadows, stuff like that.”
> 
> “Fun,” says Jonathan.

They reach Morgan-Monroe, Indiana by early afternoon. Nancy has a notebook in her hand with an address and a phone number. 

The address Nancy directs them to turns out to be a forest. The air is heavily still, not a single breeze. Clouds have rolled over the sun, sending the area into a pre-storm dim haze. Exchanging glances, they get out of the car.

Steve takes his bat out of the trunk, gripping the handle with comfortable familiarity. Nancy loads her revolver, already scanning the horizon. Jonathan tucks brass knuckles in his pockets and sets the jug of gasoline on the ground.

“I don’t see anything,” Steve says.

Nancy reads off her pad. “The reports are of things in the night. Moaning, creeping shadows, stuff like that.”

“Fun,” says Jonathan.

They walk the parameter, looking for signs of the Upside Down—decay, fungus, fleshy portals. Nothing.

So they kill time in the afternoon, driving through the town, which looks about as normal as a town can look, and eating the food Mrs. Henderson sent along. As darkness falls, they shift uneasily, standing outside of the car and scanning the treeline. 

“I’ll take first watch,” Jonathan says. 

“You drove all day,” Nancy points out.

“Well it’s not going to be you, I know how late you were up last night.”

Steve tries not to think about the implications of that sentence.

“You need your rest!” she protests.

“And you need yours! I’ll be fine for the next four hours or so.”

“Screw this, I’ll do it,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “If you two would please stop arguing like idiots and go to bed.”

Nancy and Jonathan trade glances. Steve wonders what they mean.

“You sure, man?” Jonathan asks.

“Yeah. ‘S no problem.”

“Okay.”

“Then I’m taking second shift,” Nancy says stubbornly, and Steve remembers that tone all too well. 

Apparently Jonathan knows what that tone means, too, and doesn’t protest.

Jonathan and Nancy climb into the car, reclining the seats. Steve settles himself on the hood of the car, bat in hand. The dark is still and quiet. For four hours, he sits there, but nothing happens. There is just dark trees and quiet wind. At two in the morning, he wakes Nancy, and he slides into her seat. Across the console, Jonathan is breathing deep and steady. Steve lies for a moment, trying to get comfortable in the seat, and then drops off to the rhythm of Jonathan’s breath.

The next morning, Nancy slides into the back seat, looking a bit like a grumpy owl. “Nothing,” she snaps. “Nothing.”

Jonathan looks between the two of them, one wrist draped over the wheel. “Do we want to stay another night?”

Nancy shrugs, laying down on the back seat. 

“Let’s go,” Steve says quietly. “There’s nothing here but trees.”

Their next stop is Gilboa, Ohio, which should take about five hours. 

Steve and Jonathan drive in silence for a while, then, “Mind if I turn on some music?” Jonathan’s hand is already hovering over the dial. 

“Sure, go ahead.” 

Jonathan turns it on, makes a face, and fiddles with the dial until he finds something he likes. It’s nothing Steve recognizes off the top of his head, but it has a nice beat to it. He finds himself moving his head to the music. Jonathan looks over at him and grins. “Like it?”

“Yeah. Never heard them before.”

“It’s the Clash. Will’s favorite band.”

“Huh.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t made you a mixtape yet.”

Steve looks over at Jonathan, at him driving with both hands on the wheel, careful and deliberate. “Should I ask him to?”

Jonathan starts beaming. “Yes! He’d love it.”

It makes Steve smile, how much Jonathan loves Will. He never had the burden/blessing of siblings, but having Dustin and Max now is probably close enough. And if you count all the other little shits, well. 

“What sort of music are you into?”

“I don’t know, uh, whatever’s on the radio, I guess? Billy Joel, Witney Houston, stuff like that.” He slides a glance at Jonathan, who is rolling his eyes. 

“Yeah, that makes sense. Man, we gotta get you cultured.”

“Michael Jackson? Stevie Wonder?” he tries, and Jonathan laughs.

“It’s okay, I don’t expect you to be smart enough to have refined tastes right away.”

It takes Steve a minute to figure out he’s joking. He hadn’t expected that, really. Jonathan has always struck him as an ultra-serious responsible boring type. Maybe it’s the bags under his eyes, or the way he tends to carry himself with his shoulders nearly touching his earlobes. But right now, with the sun spilling through the window to highlight his hair, and a bright grin on his face, he looks almost _beautiful_. 

That’s not a thought Steve’s used to thinking, not about Jonathan Byers.

In the backseat, Nancy stirs, moans, sits up. “Where are we?”

Jonathan says, “About four hours away. You want some breakfast?” 

Nancy nods, yawning. 

Jonathan exits off the highway to a small town, stopping at the first place he came to, a little building called “Momma’s Diner.” Steve gives it a suspicious once-over, but inside is a fantastic array of aromas. 

“Can you believe Steve’s music taste?” Jonathan says to Nancy.

She rolls her eyes. “I suppose you’ll have to educate him the way you did me.”

“Well of course. Do you still have that mixtape I made you?”

“Yeah, actually, I do. We can play it when we get back in the car.”

They finish breakfast, and take advantage of the bathroom to brush their teeth and change clothes. Steve takes a moment to fluff his hair, even though he still feels the grime of yesterday upon him, but it’s fine. This is what roadtrips are about: lack of showers, abundance of dive restaurants. 

As they wait for Jonathan to finish the bathroom, Steve rests on the edge of the porch, squinting. 

“Stay right there!” Nancy digs through her purse, and pulls out, of all things, a polaroid. Just as she’s about to take it, Jonathan walks up to join Steve, and she snaps the picture. Grinning, she tucks it into her pocket. “Both my boys in one picture,” she chirps. 

_When did they become her boys?_

She takes the front seat this time, rolling down the window and letting her feet hang out. Her shorts are rucked up so most of her thigh is showing, and her shoes are lost somewhere on the floorboard. Jonathan puts the tape in, and they roll down the highway to the sounds of electric guitars and keyboards. At each new song, Jonathan will say over his shoulder, “This is Joy Division,” or “This is the Talking Heads,” or “This is Sex Pistols,” and Steve will nod like he’s totally cool and informed about this.

Nancy tapes the polaroid to the dash. It’s orange tinted, and neither of them are smiling, but she declares she loves it. With a sharpie, she captions it _My boys._

They stop once for gas, twice for the bathroom, once for dinner. It should take them five hours, but it takes them eight, but it’s not like they have any timeline to follow anyway. When they start the last half-hour to Gilboa, the sun is starting to set. They pass a big open field, like the ones on post-cards. Jonathan whips his head around to look at it, jerking the wheel a little bit, and Steve squawks. 

“Sorry, sorry,” blurts Jonathan, but he’s pulling over. 

“What are you doing?”

“It’s too good to miss,” he answers. 

Nancy just smiles and unbuckles. 

Steve trails them out of the car as Jonathan digs his camera out of his bag. 

“How many cameras did you bring?” asks Steve. 

“Just the two.” Jonathan snaps a couple pictures of the field, then motions Nancy to get up there. She shoves her hands in her pockets and grins, not at Jonathan, but at Steve. He finds himself wanting to look away, like this little photo session is not meant for him, but yet she is inviting him in. 

Jonathan cradles the camera to his chest and offers Nancy a soft smile. “I think I got a good one.” 

Steve notes Jonathan is still using the camera he and Nancy gave him two Christmases ago. It gives him a pleased flutter in his stomach he doesn’t quite understand. There’s something endearing about that—Jonathan allowing himself time to take pictures of a sunset, something so ordinary, so everyday. Literally. 

As they start down the road again, Steve asks, “So how often do you take pictures?”

“Oh, as often as I can. I have lots of Mom and Will—of all the kids. A few of Hopper. And—lots of Nancy.” He shares a sweet glance with Nancy, who smiles with the corners of her mouth, enough for a gentle dimple.

“You should make a scrapbook,” she says. 

“Mom does.”

“Mostly candids, then?”

“Yeah, some. Some not.” Again, that private glance. 

“You still take creepy naked photos?” It was meant to be a joke, a “hey, look how far we’ve come! I broke your camera for taking creepy pictures of the girl you’re dating who I was dating haha _weird_!” but it comes out awkward and stalker-like, and somewhere close to the edge of needy. What the _fuck_. 

Instead of getting angry or snapping at Steve to mind his own business, dammit, Jonathan flushes, and Nancy does too. They share that same damn private look, _again_ , and then he says, “Maybe.”

Steve licks his lips, his stomach jumping at the thought of Nancy posing nude for Jonathan, and then his brain does something weird because. Because suddenly Steve is there, in his little fantasy, and he’s nude, too. 

Jesus _Christ_. 

“Are you okay?” Nancy’s turned in her seat.

Swallowing dryly, he says, “Yeah! Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good. Cause we’re here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise the next chapter will have an actual monster. 
> 
> [tumblr moodboard](http://stillusesapencil.tumblr.com/post/176030950015/look-forward-into-the-sun-a-stoncy-road-trip)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing, which resembles an armadillo-turtle but is definitely not an armadillo-turtle, climbs over the side of the grave, snapping its wide jaws and digging earth, tossing up tufts of grass. 
> 
> Steve scrambles backwards. Nancy fires three times in quick succession. Each hits home, but the thing just keeps coming.

This time, Nancy has an actual contact at the police station. The middle-aged man directs them to the cemetery, saying there’s reports of “sounds of children” but also that several people have gone missing while visiting the cemetery. Proper creepy, Steve decides. 

Nancy checks them into a hotel before they drive to the cemetery. It’s dark, and they start by swinging their flashlights around. All Steve sees is gravestones. 

“Should we split up?” Steve asks. “Cover more ground?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jonathan says, at the same time Nancy says, “Shut up!”

She holds up an arm to stop them, pointing her light into the gloom. “I heard something.”

In a moment, the boys hear it too. A moaning, like a child crying. Steve swings his flashlight around, half expecting a zombie child to jump out from behind a gravestone. 

“Hello?” Jonathan shouts. “Who’s there?”

The moaning intensifies. 

“I think it’s coming from over there,” Nancy whispers, and they creep forward. 

The ground rumbles beneath them. 

“Guys?” Steve says, as his legs start to vibrate. “ _Guys?_ ”

The ground opens up beneath him and Steve drops into the grave below. Something is clinging to his leg, teeth digging into his jeans but not quite breaking through. He swings at the creature with his bat, whacking at the pale head. 

Nancy screams, and Jonathan shouts. 

“Steve! Grab my hand! Steve! Steve!” 

He flails up blindly as the creature pulls him down. The earth shakes, dirt falling into his eyes and mouth. 

Jonathan grabs his shirt collar. 

Steve hits the pale head again, and his bat bounces off the hard plate. Short legs with claws dig into the soft earth, pulling him farther down. 

A gunshot. The creature shrieks, letting go of his leg.

Dark goo spurting out of the creature, onto Steve.

Jonathan tugs and Steve kicks, scrambling up and out the side of the grave. 

Nancy fires the gun again, right into the creature’s gaping mouth. It screeches again, the ground rumbling beneath them. 

It begins to climb the side of the grave, digging into the dirt, shrieking all the while.

Steve gives it a solid whack over the head with the bad, right into the place where Nancy shot it. More goo. More shrieking. 

“Gotta get it on it’s back!” Jonathan shouts. He’s holding a knife. 

The thing, which resembles an armadillo-turtle but is definitely not an armadillo-turtle, climbs over the side of the grave, snapping its wide jaws and digging earth, tossing up tufts of grass. 

Steve scrambles backwards. Nancy fires three times in quick succession. Each hits home, but the thing just keeps coming. 

He gets to his feet and takes a mighty swing, connecting at the hinge of the jaw. He does it again, and again, hoping to turn it over. 

Jonathan dives in from the side, punching with the brass knuckles. He gives up on that tactic, and starts stabbing under it into the soft part of its belly. 

Goo spurts out, catching all of them in the spray.

The thing is moving slower, still shrieking, but the sounds are shorter and more labored. 

“Get out of the way!” Nancy yells, and fires a final time, hitting it right in the eye. It drops to the ground, letting out a final blood-curdling shriek that dies away into raspy nothingness.

Panting and sweating, they stare at it’s carcass. 

“Holy shit,” Steve breathes. 

From the recesses of the cemetery comes another childlike cry. 

Jonathan picks up his flashlight and swings it across the cemetery. Nothing stirs. 

“Is it the wind?” Nancy asks.

“C’mon, you’ve gotta know better than that,” Steve retorts.

Nancy puckers her mouth grimly. 

With a sound like cracking rock, the gravestone nearest to them sprouts arms and snatches Nancy by the ankle. Yelping, she shoots it in the wrist. It lets go.

She takes aim again. The gun clicks. She curses, scrabbling at her pocket for bullets.

Steve hits it with the bat, but it rebounds like real stone. Shaking out his wrist, he looks to Jonathan.

“Whatcha got, man?”

Jonathan only motions to the headstone, which is now growing and sprouting more arms until it looks like a grasshopper had a baby with Bigfoot. 

“Fuck,” Steve sighs. 

Jonathan swings at it futilely for a moment while the thing clicks like a—well, Steve didn’t pay that much attention in biology.

“Get behind it!” Jonathan gasps.

Steve stumbles to obey, tripping over his own feet. 

“Now shove it into me!” 

“What?” 

“Shove it into me!” Jonathan repeats.

Four shots ring out in quick succession. Nancy has reloaded the gun.

Bigfoot grasshopper slumps forward just as Steve gives it a hard whack from behind, right on top of Jonathan’s knife. He jumps out of the way as it falls all the way to the ground.

Finally, silence. Steve sinks to the ground, his leg starting to throb big time. Jonathan kicks Bigfoot grasshopper over to retrieve his knife. 

“How’s your leg?” Nancy asks.

“Hurts,” Steve mumbles. 

“Can you walk?”

“Sure, yeah. Just give me a minute.” He struggles to stand, leaning like that tower in Italy. Suddenly Jonathan is there, shoving his shoulder under Steve’s arm. He’s shorter than Steve, a little broader. Steve digs his fingers into Jonathan’s other shoulder as they start moving. It hurts, but not like a break or a sprain. Just more like it had a run in with a mulcher, maybe. One of those machines that take old wood and chew it up and spit it back out so it can be the floor of playgrounds. 

Jonathan’s hand is under Steve’s ribs. It’s firm, holding him secure, but gentle, too. If he weren’t walking like Peg-leg Pete, Steve might think about it a little more. About Jonathan’s hands on his body. 

Oh no. He needs to shut that shit down right now.

As Nancy is the only one not completely covered in monster goop, she goes back to the police station and collects their payment. Grinning like she won the lottery, she holds up their wad of cash. 

“Look at what we did! Look at this!”

“Yeah, you mostly stood there and shot the gun,” Jonathan says, a teasing smile on his lips.

“We’re the ones who did the hard work,” Steve adds.

“Well next time you can do it without me,” she says primly, sliding into the driver’s seat. 

“We wouldn’t last ten minutes without you,” Steve says seriously.

Jonathan looks between them. “We’re a good team.”

*

At the hotel, Steve carefully strips off his stained jeans to get a good look at his leg. It’s just a few puncture wounds and cuts, and large bruises all the way up to his knee. He feels a little silly for being so weak, but when he comes back out of the bathroom and Nancy sees it, her eyebrows shoot nearly to her hairline, and Steve feels better. She gets him an ice pack from the machine down the hall, and he lies on the bed with his foot on a pillow. 

“You did good,” Nancy says quietly. 

He’d thought she’d gotten absorbed in her book, but apparently she’s only pretending to read, the way Steve’s only pretending to watch TV. He studies the slope of her nose and the curl of her hair in the lamplight of the hotel room. 

He still loves her. That much is damn certain. 

“Thanks.” He sighs and the TV buzzes off. He eases himself under the covers, muscles aching.

“I wasn’t sure this was a good idea, even though it was my idea,” she admits. “Now I know. We did good.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did.” 

She flashes him a smile. 

Jonathan gets out of the shower and gives Steve a nod. “You alright, man?”

Steve motions at his leg. “This? This would harm mortal men, but luckily I am no mortal man.”

Jonathan chuckles and throws his bloody clothes in a pile. “Laundry tomorrow?”

Nancy yawns. “Good plan.” 

Jonathan climbs into the bed behind Nancy, kissing her temple as she lays down. She turns off the light and Steve is left staring at the ceiling in the dark, looping the image of Jonathan kissing Nancy over and over in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should make a playlist for this. 
> 
> [tumblr](http://www.stillusesapencil.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve looks at Jonathan’s profile sideways. They used to be friends, sort of, while he was dating Nancy. Jonathan and Nancy ate lunch together every day, and Steve sometimes joined them. Steve had apologized for breaking Jonathan’s camera and everything, and they had given a good façade of being friends. 
> 
> But really, with Steve and Jonathan, there has always been too much between them, mostly in the shape of Nancy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stonathan. That's it, that's the chapter.

Steve sits in the little metal chair in the laundry mat, watching their clothes circle the washer. Jonathan comes back inside from using the payphone outside. He shoulders aren’t around his ears anymore, and he looks considerably lighter. 

“Your family alright?”

Jonathan nods. “Yeah. They’re great. Will was telling me Dustin’s driving your car?”

Steve scratches the back of his neck, hoping the kid hasn’t wrecked it yet. “Yep.” 

Jonathan eyes him for a moment, with something like surprise in his face. He takes a seat, leaving a chair between them. 

The washer makes about ten circles before Jonathan says, “You know, I hated you in high school.”

Steve shrugs. “I deserved it.” 

“No, you didn’t. Not before—before.”

“Oh?” 

“No! I hated you because you were popular and I didn’t want to like something that everyone else liked.” He looks down at his hands, clasped between his knees.

“So the beatnik thing _is_ an act?”

“That’s an improper use of beatnik, and—maybe,” he concedes, blushing a little. There’s a pause, then, “Michael Jackson isn’t horrible.”

Steve outright laughs, letting it roll through him. Jonathan Byers had just admitted to liking Michael Jackson. 

Rolling his eyes, Jonathan says, “He’s one of the most popular artists of our time for a reason.”

Steve keeps chuckling. “Okay, okay, now I have to know. What type of music do you _actually_ like?”

“Hey, I’m not all fake!”

“Sorry—sorry—”

“Dude. It’s fine.”

“Look, maybe you could make me a mixtape?”

Jonathan’s face lights up like the fucking sun. “Yeah! I’d love that! You’ll have to wait til we’re home, though, I don’t have any blank tapes.”

“Take your time.” Steve looks at Jonathan’s profile sideways. They used to be friends, sort of, while he was dating Nancy. Jonathan and Nancy ate lunch together every day, and Steve sometimes joined them. Steve had apologized for breaking Jonathan’s camera and everything, and they had given a good façade of being friends. 

But really, with Steve and Jonathan, there has always been too much between them, mostly in the shape of Nancy.

This last year, he’s really only hung out with Jonathan if Nancy or one (who is he kidding, it’s never just one, there’s always at least three of them) of the kids was there. They’d set up fireworks in the Byer’s front yard at the fourth last year, and Steve had been at Will’s birthday party, and there’s been passing conversations here and there, but nothing serious. 

And now he’s looking at Jonathan Byers in a laundry mat and thinking, shit, we could actually be friends and it might be fun. 

“My mom asked after you,” Jonathan says. 

It’s kind of her to ask after him. God knows his parents probably care fuck-all about what he’s up to. “Guess you can tell her I’m fine.”

“She’s really appreciative of what you do for Will.”

Steve shrugs. “’Sno big deal.”

“It is to her.” Jonathan runs his thumb over his knuckles. “After—after everything with Will and everything—she didn’t want to let him out of her sight. I guess you make her feel like he’s safer.”

“Man, I just drive the car.”

Jonathan shakes his head, turning to peg Steve with that gentle smile. “No, it’s so much more than that. You care an awful lot for all of them. And you keep Billy out of their hair.”

Tensing, Steve growls, “Hargrove.”

“I hate him,” Jonathan says with a vehemence that surprises Steve. Then, quieter, “He reminds me of my dad.”

Steve wants to speak, make some sound of encouragement or comfort, but he knows he’s not great at that whole _being gentle_ thing, so he just sits and waits. 

“My dad sucks, y’know, he—he’s a real asshole, messed my mom up pretty bad.” He licks his lips, looking at his hands. “I just want to be a better man than him.”

“You are,” he blurts without thinking.

Jonathan looks over at him, the bags under his eyes more prominent than normal. “You think so?”

“Yeah, I mean, you’re so good to Will, fantastic brother, he adores you.”

“Thanks.” 

“And Nancy—you’re good for her, too. You’re—you’re what she needs.”

Shaking his head, he says. “I try.”

“She probably thinks you hung the moon.” It’s one of those things said about romantic couples, right?

“But I care about what _you_ think. You, Steve Harrington.” Jonathan gazes at him steadily, to a point that Steve feels flustered.

“I think you’re great,” he manages, sounding a little strangled. 

Jonathan looks like he might say something else, but the washer buzzes. “Guess I’ll…get that.”

Steve is left to ponder the meaning of life and also Jonathan Byers. 

See, here’s the thing. Steve’s known he’s bisexual for a long time, since freshman year. He’d thought for a while that it was normal to check out other guys’ butts and pecs in the locker room, thought that it was ordinary to get a little flustered when a teammate knocks you over and lands on your chest. It wasn’t until he mentioned it to a friend, who reacted with shock and confusion (you’re not a queer, are you, Harrington?), that Steve realized, oh, he might be a little gay. 

He carried on dating girls because it was easier to act on those attractions, and also those came more frequently. And then, of course, he dated Nancy and thought he might marry her.

Now he’s in a laundry mat in Ohio, with his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend, and realizing, oh. He might be a little attracted to Jonathan. No, more than that. He might be just a little _in love_ with Jonathan.

Well shit. This road trip just got a whole lot more difficult.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nancy looks to Jonathan. “Do you think we could flame it again?” 
> 
> He stands beside her, surveying the post up to where it joins with the bottom of the bridge. “Probably.” He nods his head to Steve, and they go up the bank to where they parked the car in the grass at the bend in the road. “Let’s set a trap for this bastard, yeah?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating early because I won't be able to post tomorrow.
> 
> This chapter is 10 pages long, sorry about that.

It goes like that for a while—they drive, hunt monsters, hopefully get paid. Sometimes there’s no monster, and it’s just a spooky place with weird sounds, but more often then not there’s some creature lurking. Their clients—people that got in touch with the monster hunting network—pay them when the job is done. Most of them contact them through the police. Maybe it’s a policy.

Sometimes it’s like a summer road trip from a movie. They drive past sunny fields and small towns, stopping at diners with home-cooked food or living off fast food burgers. They stop at roadside attractions, if they’re not dead tired, and both Jonathan and Nancy take lots of photos. The polaroid collection on the dash is growing—there’s a picture of Steve in a motel bed, grinning at the camera; there’s Jonathan, shielding his face; there’s the road in front of them; their feet hanging out the trunk; and a couple of Nancy, taken when Jonathan stole her camera. 

Sometimes they sleep on the road, most times they don’t. They get little double hotel rooms and Steve has to sleep across the room from the two people that he definitely has crushes on. Sometimes at night (more often than he would like, though he’ll never admit that), Nancy will clear her throat and say, “I’m going for a walk.” And five minutes later, Jonathan leaves, too. Steve’s no dummy. He knows what they’re doing. Sometimes, he’s the one that says he’ll take a drive, with a pointed look at both of them. He gets it. He does. It doesn’t make it any easier. 

Once, he comes back too early, and when he opens the door hears muffled moans. He quickly backs out and carefully walks a full lap all the way around the outside of the hotel, twice. When he comes back, Nancy and Jonathan are fully clothed and watching television. They never speak of it. Steve aggressively does not think of it again, for a number of reasons. One, it hurts, because he’s still in love with Nancy, and he might have a small crush on Jonathan, and anytime someone you love is fucking someone else it plain sucks balls. Two, the thought of the two most attractive people he knows having sex is _really fucking hot_. Enough said.

They drive across the states in a meandering manner, always planning to get to Nancy’s eventual goal of Montauk. They spend a long time in West Virginia, spend a few days in Kentucky, go over to Virginia, and turn back north to Pennsylvania. They have a case there that apparently others have tackled, and failed. 

They pull into town after midnight, find the closest shitty motel. They’re tired, it’s been a long day of driving, and last night they defeated something that looked like creature from the black lagoon, if the creature from the black lagoon had viper teeth and a barbed tail. Nancy’s got a nasty cut down her left arm from that one. 

When they open the door, there is only one bed.

“I’ll take the floor,” Steve says instantly. 

“Steve, no,” Nancy sighs.

“It’s fine.” He’s already pulling the blanket off the foot of the bed.

“Don’t fight us on this, man,” Jonathan says. “The bed’s big enough.” 

Steve tries to not think about the implications of that sentence, and puts his hands on his hips to glower at them. “Are you sure?” he sighs.

“Yes!” Nancy takes the blanket from his hands. “Now go brush your teeth.”

When they’re all ready for bed, Nancy and Jonathan climb right in, Nancy spooning into Jonathan, under the crook of his arm. 

“C’mon, man. Sleeping on the floor is no fun. Please join us.” 

Maybe Steve should have refused, but Jonathan is so damn _nice_ about it, so earnest and gentle and kind. Coming from any other person on this planet, it would be a taunt. Yeah, come share the bed while I’m cuddling with the love of your life. But from Jonathan, it’s not. It’s just not. Steve runs a hand through his hair, scratches the back of his neck, and climbs in. He edges to the side of the bed, feeling the air at his back. 

Across from him, Nancy turns one corner of her mouth up. “Relax, Steve. Go to sleep.” 

Nancy and Jonathan drop off quickly, their breath evening out and meshing together in a steady rhythm. Steve, stiff and wound tight, is yet again left staring into the dark. 

*

Warm. It’s so warm. Steve wakes to a small body pressed to his back and a large hand draped over his shoulder. 

Oh God. 

They are smushed together (Jonathan spooning Nancy spooning Steve), and Steve’s heart starts pumping double time. He has to get out of this bed.

On the other hand, he could not get out of the bed, and pretend to sleep longer, just so he can live in this little fantasy world for just a few more minutes—

But no. He can’t do that, it’s not fair to them, and it only would hurt him more. He slides carefully out from under Jonathan’s hand and rolls away from Nancy. Unfortunately, he underestimated how wide the bed was, and lands on the floor with a thump.

Nancy sits up, raking her hair out of her eyes. “You okay?” Her voice is raspy from sleep.

“Fine,” Steve mumbles, righting himself. 

She looks at him, mouth a little slack, hair in a curly halo. Her sharp blue eyes hold such a depth of emotion—sorrow, maybe a little remorse. He runs a hand through his hair, looking away and then glancing back up through his bangs. Her expression had changed, and now it reminds him a bit of how she looked when she stood soaking wet in his bedroom and peeled off her shirt. 

No, that can’t be right. Steve shakes his head to clear it. “Go back to sleep,” he whispers. 

She lowers herself back into the soft warm embrace of Jonathan (and the bed). 

Steve takes a long, hot, shower. He stares at himself in the foggy mirror. “Get it together, Harrington.” This cannot go on. He can’t go the rest of this roadtrip pining for Nancy. And he can’t keep lusting after Jonathan. It has to stop, now. 

They meet with their client after breakfast, a woman who reminds Steve of an older Joyce Byers. Sitting across from them at the police station, she insists that her husband was killed by the “thing under the bridge” and that the police won’t help her, that they don’t believe her. The police officer rolls his eyes.

“That’s what we do best,” says Jonathan, not looking at the officer. It’s so damn cheesy, but Steve feels a swell of pride regardless.

She tells them it was big, that it spit slime, and that it had teeth. They had gotten a flat going home, and her husband had gone to fix it when the thing came from under the bridge. It had stayed out of the light, making it hard to see. All in all, it’s shaping up to be a difficult monster.

She directs them to the bridge, which is red and covered with a white roof. Surrounded by field and over a river, it’s not creepy enough to resemble the Upside Down in any way. They walk up and down the road, up the river bank and back, and finally under the bridge.

“Guys?” Nancy calls. She’s pointing to the foliage around the concrete bridge support. The grass has withered black, and white flakes hover in the air. 

“Well that’s not good,” Steve says.

Jonathan stoops down to feel the grass. It breaks off under his hands with brittle snaps. “Upside Down alright,” he mumbles.

Steve crunches around the support, looking for a portal, but there is none. “You think it comes out of here?”

Nancy runs her hand down the smooth concrete. “Probably.” She looks to Jonathan. “Do you think we could flame it again?” 

He stands beside her, surveying the post up to where it joins with the bottom of the bridge. “Probably.” He nods his head to Steve, and they go up the bank to where they parked the car in the grass at the bend in the road. “Let’s set a trap for this bastard, yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

Together, they spend their afternoon setting up a trap for this thing, even though they’re not even sure what it is. Steve prays that it works. If it doesn’t, well, they might be screwed. And potentially dead in the morning.

Nancy runs to town and gets them some burgers from a fast food place; Steve doesn’t pay attention, he just eats. Somehow, knowing that this thing has actually killed people before makes all the anticipation worse. The hours tick later, and darkness descends gradually, stealing the treeeline, the opposite end of the bridge, and finally, everything but a few feet in front of them. There is no moon. The only sound is that of the river.

Something groans. 

Steve’s head snaps off his chest. He had fallen asleep sitting on the hood of the car. He slams his hand on the windshield, which is enough to wake Nancy. She and Jonathan get out of the car. 

The something groans again. 

Nancy cocks her gun and creeps forward, Jonathan and Steve flanking her. He loosens and tightens his grip on the bat, twisting it in his fingers. 

The something keeps groaning, getting louder. 

The slink to the edge of the bridge. Jonathan stands at the entrance to the bridge, holding a lighter. He gives Nancy and Steve a nod. They edge around the side, now with Steve leading. 

“Here monster,” he whispers. “Come take a bite of this.” He twists the bat in his hands again. 

Mist rises from the river.

“M’cold,” Nancy mumbles. The temperature has dropped, and the damp mist is not helping. 

The groaning stops, and all Steve hears is his breathing, heavy in his own ears.

A thing leaps from under the bridge, directly at Steve. He screams, a very unmanly sound he will deny later, and swings wildly at what he assumes is it’s head, but looks like a combination of a frog and an alligator. He misses, bat bouncing off the concrete support instead. The thing _jumps_ over his head (maybe it is a giant frog?). 

Nancy fires, misses. “Jonathan!” she shrieks. 

“Coming to you!” This was not how it was supposed to go. 

The mist has fully settled, so thick Steve can’t even see Jonathan. All is lost to filmy darkness. 

The thing roars at a low level, like if a croak was a roar, and Jonathan shouts. Abruptly, it is quiet.

“Jonathan?” Nancy yells. “ _Jonathan_?”

She and Steve go racing up the hill to the entrance to the bridge. She swings the flashlight around, but there is nothing. He bends over and picks up the lighter. 

“Nancy.” He holds it up, thinning his lips. 

She puts a hand to her mouth. “No!” She shakes her head, frowning. “Okay. Okay. We’re gonna kill this thing.”

“We don’t know for sure he’s dead, Nance.” Steve feels useless, hopeless. If Jonathan is gone…he refuses to pursue that line of thought. 

She whirls away from him, swinging the flashlight again. “Look.” She points at a puddle of slime, close to the edge of the bridge. It has streaks in it, like something was dragged through it. 

“Okay.” 

She is already moving that direction, which will lead them down the other side of the concrete support back under the bridge. Nancy runs down the hill, calling for Jonathan. 

“Nancy, wait!” 

He is too late. The thing jumps out again, slime dripping from it’s jaws, sharp incisor teeth on full display. 

Nancy shoots it in the mouth, and it coughs slime mixed with blood onto her face and head. She squeals and fires another shot. This one nails it in the shoulder, but it jumps over her, landing right in front of Steve.

For a second, he gets a clear look down the creature’s throat and at the slime climbing upward to shoot at him, before he connects solidly in the jaw. It falls to the ground, rolling down the hill. 

Nancy fires again, missing. 

It writhes to its feet, jumping away into the dark, groaning. 

“Jonathan!” She hurries under the bridge, but there is no sign of Jonathan. She scrambles to the support. A giant crack splits up the middle, fleshy pink flaps hanging from either side of the crack. Before he can say anything, she steps through. 

Steve grabs her wrist before she disappears completely. “Don’t!”

“Let me go!”

“No!”

“Jonathan’s probably in here! Let me go! I’ve done this before.” She hits him with that cold stare. “Just stay right here so I can find my way back.” 

Steve looks into her hard blue eyes, and he really wants to kiss her. Just in case. Just in case it’s the last time. 

He lets go of her wrist. She disappears in the dark hole. He stands just outside, holding his bat at the ready in case the creature decided to jump scare him again. 

The river crashes at his feet. The mist still surrounds him. 

Out of the mist leaps the creature, spewing bloody slime. Steve whacks it in the side, making it roll across the ground once. It jumps at him, almost landing on top of him, but he knocks it out of the air by hitting its leg. Maybe it will stop jumping. 

No such luck. It jumps and lands on top of him, letting out another croaking roar. 

Steve roars right back, grabbing it by the jaw. Shit, it’s even slimy like a frog. Gross. 

It drips blood and slime onto his face, smelling of rot and sewer water. He risks letting go one hand to whack at it’s snout with his fist. 

“Steve!” Nancy reaches through the portal. “Steve!”

He manages a grunt. 

Nancy fires, hitting it in the side. It tumbles off Steve, landing in the river. He scrambles to his feet, grabs Nancy’s wrist to pull her through the now-shrinking portal. 

“No! No, I’ve got Jonathan!”

He is covered in a cocoon of hard slime. She is pulling by his feet. Steve reaches in (it’s very cold in there, ugh), and scoops Jonathan up. Carrying his sticky form bridal style, he races up the hill, Nancy trailing him. 

Behind them, the awful groaning starts again. 

The creature drags itself out of the river, and for the first time he sees its eyes are glowing red. 

“Nancy, the lighter!” 

“Where?” 

“Back pocket! Hurry!”

It’s gaining on them, jumping. 

She shoves her hand deep in his back pocket, pulls out the lighter. “Go go go!” she screams.

They are almost to the car. “Now!” he howls. 

She throws the lighter, and it catches on the gasoline they has poured that afternoon. It spreads in a glorious circular blaze, trapping the creature inside. It screams in agony as the orange light surrounds it. Its skin starts to blister and wither, turning burnt brown. He watches in horror as the whole thing shrivels and writhes, screaming, screaming. Steve will never forget the screaming. It drops, squirming, spasming, and finally falling still. 

The fire still burns, white-hot. Gasoline stench envelops them. 

“We need to go,” Nancy says, tugging at his arm. 

The fire is spreading. It licks at the bridge. 

They hurry to the car, Steve chucking Jonathan in the backseat and Nancy hurrying to drive. As they pull away, the bridge starts to go up in flames. 

“Is he alive?” she asks.

He takes Jonathan’s pulse. There, steady. Jonathan is cold to the touch, but that is only from the Upside Down. Or so he hopes. Damn Byers and their damn dimension-traveling capabilities. “Yeah. He’s alive.”

Nancy speeds down the road. “Can you wake him?”

“I’ll try.”

Steve spends the rest of the ride with Jonathan’s head in his lap, trying to wake him. Nothing seems to have any effect. He’s getting worried. They go through the back door of the hotel, still carrying Jonathan bridal style. Steve sets him on the bed. 

Nancy sits next to him and starts peeling off slime. It sticks to her hands, hanging off in strings. “Let’s put him in the bathtub.”

The turn the shower head on lightly warm and deposit him still fully clothed and unconscious under the spray. They both scrub at the slime. It dissolves in the water. Nancy unties his shoes and sets them to the side in a little puddle. She strips slowly, having Steve support him to take off his shirt and pants. When Jonathan is down to his (soaked) boxers, he starts to stir, moaning and flopping his hand weakly. 

Nancy turns off the shower. “Jonathan?”

His eyes slide open. 

“Hey. How ya feeling?”

He groans. 

“It’s okay. You’re okay.” 

“Takes more than a frog to kill me,” he grunts. 

Stroking his cheek with her thumb, she leans in to kiss him gently. 

Steve steps out, feeling he’s intruding. His muscles ache, and the tender part of his stomach definitely got kicked or something, because it’s throbbing in time with his pulse. He’s thirsty and kind of wants to throw up. Stripping off his own slime covered shirt, he drops to the end of the bed. They should really go down and ask the receptionist for another room. He’s too tired. 

Jonathan limps out of the bathroom, supported by Nancy. She looks so small, tucked into his side like that. Steve makes room on the bed, and Jonathan, now clad in sweatpants, immediately drops onto it. 

“How ya doing?”

Jonathan shrugs. “Thanks,” he whispers. “For saving my life and everything.”

“Your trap worked like a charm.”

Grinning weakly, he pulls up the blanket. “M’gonna sleep now.” 

“Okay.” He exits to the bathroom, staring at his messy reflection for a moment before turning on the hot water.

With a soft knock on the door, Nancy peeps in. “Sorry. Can I join you?”

His brain fizzles out and restarts. _Can I join you?_ An image of Nancy, wreathed in steam, smiling at him. “Uh, I—”

She rolls her eyes, a teasing smile at the corners of her mouth. “Not like that. I’ll need a shower eventually, but you can go first. I just need to get the—” she gestures at the slime in her hair, closing the door behind her. 

He swallows. “Yeah, that’s fine. Yeah.”

“Okay.” She ducks into the sink, running the tap and scrubbing at her hair.

He turns his back to her to strip, getting into the shower as quickly as possible. The hot water soothes his muscles and bruises, running over him comfortingly. His mind clears a bit, and he replays the last few hours. Frog monster is definitely dead, he saw that with his own eyes. They can go to the police tomorrow and ask for payment. And Jonathan is okay. That is the most important thing.

Suddenly he thinks of Jonathan in only his soaking boxers. It wasn’t exactly the most arousing sight at the time, but any other time, if Jonathan was awake and standing, with water trailing down his chest—

Nancy is literally right on the other side of that curtain, but his dick gives exactly zero fucks. In fact, that knowledge has the opposite of the desired effect. He sighs. Now is not the time for this. 

“Do you think the bridge is okay?” 

Steve almost jumps out of his skin. “What?”

“The bridge. Do you think it burnt down?”

He shuts off the water. “I hope not.” Securing a towel around his waist, he steps out. 

Nancy is sitting on the closed toilet, hair sopping and drenching her shirt. She turns her comb over and over in her hands. “If it did—we might not get paid. I don’t know if it counts as destruction of public property—”

“We can give Hopper a call tomorrow.” 

“Mm.” 

“Hair?”

“What?” 

“Did you get it all out of your hair?”

“No,” she sighs. 

“Do you—can I help?”

She looks up, blue eyes tired. “You really want to comb my hair, Steve?”

“Yeah. S’no bother.”

“Well, put on clothes first.”

He hurries to quietly dress from his suitcase, but Jonathan is out cold, so he didn’t really need to worry anyway. Nancy sits on the edge of the tub, a towel round her shoulders. Steve stands behind her, looking down at the goop clinging to her hair. He starts by gently working it apart with his fingers, pulling out big chunks, then breaking them down into smaller and smaller bits. He starts at the bottom of her hair and works his way up to untangle it. He’s seen Max do this after swimming in his pool with her hair down. Says it hurts less when she pulls. 

How many times has he done this before? Play with her hair, gently run his fingers through it. He’d always loved this, running his fingers through her soft locks. Caressing her scalp and massaging away the tension. Before he knows it, he is giving her a head massage and she is giving little sounds of pleasure. Those noises are doing things to him, so he moves to her neck and shoulders. It doesn’t help. The noises only increase.

“What are you so worried about that’s causing you so much tension?”

“Monsters?”

“Fair.” He rubs at a stubborn shoulder knot with his thumb. “That’s enough to give anyone a lifetime of tension.”

“You.” 

“Huh?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Ah, I’m fine.”

“What are you going to do when you get home?”

“Ah, I—” he digs into that knot again, making her grunt. “I don’t know. I’ll get a different job, for sure. Move out from my parents.”

“Where to?”

“Geez, I don’t know, I don’t have it all figured out this minute.”

She hums. Her back has practically melted under his hands.

“You and Jonathan are going to college, right?”

“Yeah.” 

“Do you think you’ll get married?” 

She stiffens. Steve wonders what he said wrong.

“Marriage would be nice,” she says slowly, hesitantly.

“But?”

There is a long pause. He stops massaging. 

She sighs. “But nothing. It’s none of your business Steve.”

He steps back from her as she rotates on the rim of the tub. 

“I’m going to shower now. Thanks for everything, it felt great.” She smiles, just on the edge of flirty. Or that could be his imagination. “You have good hands.”

Shit, that went straight to his dick again. “Oh, uh, thanks?” Maybe it was not his imagination. Stop that, Harrington. 

She giggles. “Goodnight, Steve.”

“G’night.” He contemplates the bed momentarily, but Jonathan is already asleep, so Steve takes a pillow and a blanket and stretches on the floor. When Nancy gets out of the shower, he is almost asleep. 

She nudges his hip with her toe. “Get on the bed, you idiot. You’re not sleeping on the floor.”

He doesn’t fight her, just drags himself onto the bed behind her, where she has pushed against Jonathan’s back. If he were to scoot closer, they would be cuddling (Steve spooning Nancy spooning Jonathan), but he quickly decides against that. He thinks about the morning, and isn’t sure if he wants to wake up snuggled with them or not.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone is knocking on their door. No, not knocking, _banging_ , aggressively slamming against the wood so hard it rattles in the wall. 
> 
> “We know you’re in there! You burned down our bridge!”
> 
> Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I almost forgot to post this chapter today, whoops. Life has been crazy. 
> 
> In other news, this has two of my favorite scenes of the entire fic. They were some of the first scenes I wrote and then spent the rest of the time wondering how long it would be before I could include them.

Someone is knocking on their door. No, not knocking, _banging_ , aggressively slamming against the wood so hard it rattled in the wall. 

Nancy looks at Steve with big eyes, then throws off the sheet and silently springs to her suitcase to grab her revolver. Pressing a finger to her lips, she gestures for Steve to get his bat. To Jonathan she motions at their clothes on the floor. He nods and starts shoving them quickly into their bags. 

The someone bangs on the door again. “We know you’re in there! You burned down our bridge!”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. 

As Nancy slides the catch on the door, Steve stations himself just behind it, holding his breath. She opens the door, holding the revolver out of sight.

“Good morning?” she croaks, laying on the “I just woke up” voice.

He hears the accuser step back, and in a calmer voice, the man says, “You’re the monster hunter?”

“Yes.”

“You burnt down our bridge!”

“Oh. Oh no! I’m so sorry! Can I—”

“I hope you can pay for the damage.” The anger is back in the man’s voice. 

“I—”

“That bridge has been there for two hundred years!” This is a different voice. 

_How many?_ Steve wonders. 

“We’re truly sorry, my partner was injured in the fight and—”

“I don’t care that you’re sorry! The bridge is gone!”

“Look, just pay us and we’ll leave.” Steel is creeping into Nancy’s words. 

“Did you do it on purpose? I bet you did!”

“Oh my—what the hell is your problem? We killed a monster!”

“You need to get out of our town!” 

“That’s what I—”

Steve steps out from behind the door. “Look, just leave the lady alone, give us our payment, and we’ll leave.”

Nancy shakes her head. There are four men out there, brows furrowed and faces red. “Steve,” she says. “Let’s just go.”

“You think we’re paying you?”

“We are a paid team. Maybe we should start getting paid in advance.” He’s starting to get dangerously angry, tightening his grip on the bat.

“If anything, you should pay us. Destroying our public property.”

“Steve,” Nancy pleads.

“We did you a favor! You could at least be grateful!”

Jonathan’s wide hand lands on Steve’s shoulder. “Let’s just go,” he gentles. 

“Fine,” Steve spits. “If you’ll let us pass.”

The four men edge out of their way, keeping wary sharp eyes on them. The trio remains as calm as possible, Steve evening his breath. The four men follow them to the car, watching as they load their things and get in, Steve choosing shotgun and Nancy still holder her revolver in the back seat. 

As they pull out of the parking lot and are just about to relax, one of the men fires at them. It hits the right sideview mirror, Jonathan swerves, and Steve throws himself across the console. Nancy starts to roll down the window, cocking her gun.

“Don’t,” Jonathan gasps, panicked, “Don’t, it’s fine, it’s fine!” He speeds up, tires squealing and the car groaning in protest. 

Two more shots sound behind them, but both miss. 

“Bastard!” Nancy splutters. “Goddamn bastard!”

Steve looks out the rear window. “I think we’re out of range now.”

“I’m not risking it,” Jonathan replies. He continues to speed, heedless of the roadsigns they pass. It is only when they are about a hundred miles down the road that he slows. “We need gas.”

They stop at the next station. Steve takes his toothbrush and wallet in, intending to brush his teeth and then immediately ruin his dental hygiene with his purchases. He ends up buying nearly half the store—candy, chips, granola bars, soda, water bottles, a box of sticky buns, and a pack of mint gum. The cashier doesn’t even blink. She probably sees weird shit like this all the time. 

At the car, Jonathan leans on the roof. 

“You feeling alright?” 

Jonathan shrugs. “I’ll feel better when we have some more space between us and—” He stops. 

“Me too. I can’t believe them.”

He snorts. “Me either, man.” 

“Want me to drive for a little?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice. Thanks. I could use a little more sleep.”

“Sure, whatever you need. How’s the…how’s the everything.” He gestures vaguely, the sudden unbidden image of Jonathan in his boxers making him flush.

“I’m a little sore, but I’m fine. I’m looking forward to taking a shower unassisted.” He gives Steve a cryptic look. 

“Yeah, I bet that’ll be nice.” 

“How far should we go, do you think?”

“Where’s our next job?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I think Nancy’s ready to go to Montauk.”

Steve thinks about that. “That’s, like—”

“Yeah.”

“We could drive through the night?”

Jonathan pushes off the car. “You wanna?”

“Sure, we can do it. Just let me know if you wanna stop for a picture of a leaf or some shit.”

Jonathan grins. “Okay. I want a we-survived-angry-villagers-picture.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He pulls out his camera and takes the shot, catching Steve looking irritated but resigned. Nancy joins them, and Jonathan takes another. 

“Shall we?” she asks. 

They load up, Steve taking driver and Nancy shotgun. He looks at the dash, covered in polaroids of happy moments. In the center is the one labeled “my boys.” He lingers on that one for a moment. It has a nice ring to it. 

“You have any more polaroid film?” he asks.

“Only one. I’m saving it for something special.”

“Huh.” He pulls on his sunglasses. 

Nancy peeps into his plastic bag of food. “Can I have a sticky bun?”

“Yeah, sure. Can you open one for me?”

They eat their breakfast in silence. Jonathan is already asleep in the backseat. Steve thinks about driving beside Nancy. They used to always travel this way, him driving, her beside him. Sometimes they held hands across the console. He misses her. Even though she’s sitting right beside him, he misses her.

He wants her back, wants to be able to cradle her to his chest and kiss her blind, wants to share his secrets with her, wants to plan his future with her, plan his future _with her_ , but he can do any of those things. She’s not his anymore. 

Not that Nancy belongs to anyone. Those privileges aren’t his anymore. Steve supposes that’s what people mean when they refer to another person as “theirs.” 

“It’s good having both of you,” Nancy says, staring out the window.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We just balance out.”

“Mm.” Listening to her compare him to Jonathan is not what he wants right now. 

“I missed you.” 

He sneaks a glance at her. She’s still looking out the windshield, down the road. “I…missed you too,” he ventures. 

“I still miss you.”

He swallows. 

“When I think about what he had—it was good. I really did love you, Steve.”

Anger born from hurt bubbles up his sternum. “Thought you said that was bullshit.” He dips his chin and keeps his eyes dutifully on the road.

“No…No, it was more like I thought that the way—the way we had to pretend that everything was fine, that Barb wasn’t dead—that was bullshit.” She pauses, looking down at her hands. “Not you.”

“Sure sounded real at the time,” he sighs. 

“I know.” It’s a small admission, barely there. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “It’s okay. We’re here now, aren’t we?” He plasters a smile on his mouth, saying what he thinks she wants to hear, what he hopes will make her feel better. 

“No, it’s not, I—I still love you, Steve.”

He looks over sharply, at her staring at her hands in her lap, at the little furrow between her brows. He remembers the moment his heart broke, standing in Tina’s tiny bathroom as she told him _it’s all bullshit,_ remembered standing in the alley behind school and then later in the Byer’s front yard, saying _It’s okay, Nance. It’s okay._

God, it hurts. And now she’s telling him she still loves him, like none of the hurt is worth it, like none of it matters. How many times has he dreamed of her saying those words to him? But it was never like this. Not when Jonathan was still in the picture. 

It’s all too much. 

“I’ve always loved you, Nance,” he says finally. 

She says nothing. 

He sneaks a glance to the backseat a Jonathan. As soon as he sees Steve looking, he shuts his eyes. 

_I’m sorry,_ Steve wants to say. But it’s too late now. 

*

When they are still several hours away from Montauk and the sun is going down, all three of them agree it’s time for dinner. They also need gas. Steve proposes they just get food at the station, after all, his earlier haul held them this long. Jonathan is all for it.

Nancy shakes her head. “We can’t live on gas station candy, boys.”

“Fine,” Jonathan says. 

“We’re probably far enough away that we can take a breather,” Steve says, thinking about the last town.

Jonathan shakes his head, starting resolutely down the road. Despite what he overheard earlier, he has said nothing about it to either Steve or Nancy, and has continued to act completely normal. It’s a little concerning. A man who is calm when angry is truly the most dangerous.

“Let’s at least get some real food,” Nancy pleads. 

They stop first for gas, and then at McDonalds, going through the drive through. Jonathan declares he isn’t hungry, but Steve and Nancy join forces to convince him to buy a burger and fries. He’ll want it later. 

They push on. Nancy goes to sleep in the back, leaving Steve and Jonathan together in silence.

There’s a surprising amount of traffic on the highway. Semis, minivans, and cars race past Jonathan’s tired car. He keeps both hands on the wheel, like always. 

“Steve.”

“Yeah?” _Oh, God, don’t let him be asking about earlier._

“Can you feed me?”

“What?”

“The fries. I’m hungry. Just like—feed me.”

“I—okay.” Steve digs through the greasy McDonald’s bag and pulls out the little container of fries. They’re cold, a result of Jonathan being too stubborn to eat. “How do you—?”

Jonathan opens his mouth like a bird. Well. Okay then. Steve puts one fry between his lips. Jonathan catches it in his teeth and chews it into his mouth. “Thanks.”

They continue like this for a while, Steve carefully resting the fry against his bottom lip so he can take it in his teeth. Occasionally, his tongue sweeps over his lower lip to gather up the leftover salt. Steve allows himself to watch for the little flicks of tongue. 

With a surprisingly short fry, Steve’s thumb grazes Jonathan’s lower lip. His tongue flicks out over the spot Steve touched. Steve finds himself licking his own lip, swallowing hard. 

Stillness settles between them as the light seeps away, leaving them staring down the gloomy highway in silence.

For half an hour, Steve feeds the fries one at a time. When they are gone, Jonathan smiles. “Mm. Thanks so much.” 

“Do you—the burger?”

“Yeah. I can manage that.” He leaves only one hand on the wheel to eat the burger. 

Oh shit. Could he have used one hand the whole time? No matter. What’s done is done. 

The newfound intimacy lingers between them. Steve turns on the radio and finds slow rock, even as Jonathan rolls his eyes. Behind them, Nancy sleeps.

“It’s times like these I wish this could last forever,” Jonathan says.

“Driving at night?”

“No. Just this. You. Her. Me. Us.”

 _Us._ It’s not something Steve consciously applies to them, but not that Jonathan says it, yeah. They are an us. They are a team, a trio. “Yeah,” Steve agrees, and he means it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t like this place,” Jonathan says. “It feels wrong.”
> 
> “Let’s go in,” Nancy says.

They pull into Montauk in the early hours of the morning. They pull into a motel, the neon sign casting red glow over all of them. Nancy is still asleep, so Steve checks them in, making sure to get a double, and Jonathan carries Nancy’s prone form up one flight of stairs to their room. He lays her on the bed, pulls off her shoes. He brushes his hand down her arm with a tender, gentle look. Loving. It’s painful. There’s just so much _weight_ there, so much heavy meaning. Steve winces internally. It shouldn’t hurt him. Not after all this time. Yet somehow, it does. It aches deep in his core. He loves them. He loves them both. 

God.

He goes to bed.

In the morning, they start their investigation in town. No one called from here; there is no client to interview. All they have is missing children reports and a government base. The people they speak to give them funny looks, wary. Scared. 

One man just shakes his head and says, “They are listening.”

“They are listening?” Nancy repeats incredulously when Steve relates it to her. “What the hell are they doing over there?” She looks through her pile of missing children reports. They’re not giving up on this.

They finally go directly to the base after lunch. Like Hawkins, it is completely surrounded with chain link fence, topped with barbed wire. Signs saying “Dangerous!” and “Private Property” warn them with heavy black and red type. Inside the fence, all they three can make out is a small building and a large wire dish. It points to the sky, perhaps communicating with Russia. Or aliens. Or little children with psychic nose-bleeding powers. 

“I don’t like this place,” Jonathan says. “It feels wrong.”

“Let’s go in,” Nancy says.

“Are you crazy?” Steve retorts. “No!”

“Yes,” she says. 

Jonathan shakes his head. “Don’t fight her, man. You and I both know she won’t give up.”

Nancy smiles at them both, and they head to the gate. 

Of course, they won’t let them in. Official secret base and all. So, several hours, fall of darkness, and one pair of boltcutters later, they get inside the fence. 

A light sweeps a circle around the area. They press flat to the earth. The light passes overhead. 

“To the building?” Steve whispers.

Jonathan shakes his head. “No. There has to be a back entrance.”

“No one’s gone in or out of that all day, right?” Nancy whispers.

“Yeah. So a back entrance.”

“Ok,” Steve says. 

They creep through the grass and trees, low to the ground, freezing every time the light makes another pass. When they have nearly made a full circle of the outpost, Jonathan stops. 

“Guys, look.” He points at a manhole cover. It’s in a concrete dome, and the lid is labeled with Montauk’s sewer company. 

Nancy shrugs. “Worth a shot.”

He motions to Steve, and they squat down to scrabble at the edges of the metal circle. Steve manages to get his fingers under the lip.

“Get down,” Nancy whispers. 

They drop. The lid pinches his fingers. The light passes overhead. 

Steve groans as he strains for purchase. Jonathan matches him, grunting. His arms bulge as they tip it up and lift it away, revealing a cold hole. Metal rungs lead down the side into a blue-lit hallway.

They trade glances. 

“I’ll go first,” Steve says. 

“Be careful,” Nancy whispers. 

He hands his bat to Jonathan, who gives him a nod. He starts down the ladder. 

It’s not as deep as he thought it would be, and the blue-ish light illuminates the tiled walls and floor. The tunnel leads only forward, where it dead ends into a larger hallway. Steve starts to motion for the other two, but Nancy is already coming down. Jonathan passes down his bat, handle first, before skipping the ladder completely and jumping down the hole. He squats as he lands. What a nerd.

They inch down the hall to the bigger hallway, which stretches a long way both ways. 

“You know we’re going to get caught,” Nancy whispers. “There’s no way we won’t.” It’s not a plea for them to stop. It is a statement of fact, and it is her way of opening the door for them back out. 

Jonathan gives her hand a squeeze and Steve nods at her. Whatever happens, they’re in it together. 

For a fleeting moment, Steve wonders if they could back out now. Safe. Then he thinks of El, and all the other kids, and those thoughts disappear to never be revisited. This is far more important than his personal safety.

The blue hallway is long, with several turns and doors. They try each door, but none opens. After yet another corner, Jonathan stops them to point at a cracked door. Inside, two men sit in front of a wall of TVs. On each screen is a different video feed—rooms and doors, hallways. And then, an entire row of screens dedicated to cells with children in them.

Oh God. 

Nancy nudges Steve’s arm and indicates one of the screens. Steve can see their backs and the door they stand by. 

_Shit._

On another screen, people in full- body armor trot down the hall. 

Steve leaps back from the door. “We gotta go, go now!” 

The break into a sprint down the hall. Behind them, the sound of rhythmic pounding feet pursue them. Ahead, the hall dead-ends into a T.

Nancy fumbles in her jacket pocket for her gun. “To the left!” she shouts.

Jonathan skids on the floor, crashing into the wall before gaining traction. 

In front of them is a person in head-to-toe armor. They brandish two identical weapons, pointing them at the trio. Flames burst from the ends. 

Nancy and Jonathan stop, but Steve keeps running, vaulting over the lines of fire to smash his bat down on the helmet. He lands, feeling the heat around him. When he smashes the helmet a second time, the person falls over, extinguishing the flames as they go. 

“That was awesome,” Jonathan manages. “Like something out of a movie.”

Nancy nods, starting to smile.

“All those years of track weren’t for nothing,” Steve shrugs.

Someone shoots behind them.

“Never mind, go!” Nancy shouts and they sprint down the hall again. “Right!” she shouts.

“How do you know?” Steve pants as they veer down the hall.

“Numbers,” she says. “We’re going to the children.”

Every door has a number over it. Whatever she saw on the screens, she seems to know where they’re going now. 

Their pursuers are gaining. Nancy fires a shot over her shoulder. It strikes the wall, shattering tile and sending a cloud of pale dust into the air. 

They turn down a final hall. At the end are big metal double doors, a keypad to one side. Two people in full armor stand ready. 

They tumble to a stop, two men on one side, an unknown number coming on the other. 

Nancy fires two shots at the two at the end. It only buries in the Kevlar, doing nothing to them. They take aim. 

“Watch out!” Jonathan hurls two little objects at them, stumbles back, pulling Steve with him. 

There’s an explosion, smoke filling the entire hall. 

Steve coughs, waving his hands in front of his face. “Were those _bombs?_ ”

“Yeah. I built ‘em a while back. Hadn’t seen a use for them yet.”

“Holy shit,” Steve breathes. “Holy _shit._ ” 

Nancy fires. 

Steve whirls. 

Six troopers approach, each armed with a gun or flamethrower.

“You got any more of those?” he asks.

“’Fraid not.”

Steve steps forward, clenching the bat. “Somebody get to work on that door.”

In the following moments, Steve has only two thoughts, one of which was surprisingly philosophical for a man who tried to fail English lit. 

The first is that of all the things they’ve battled, it’s always the people that give them the most trouble. Sometimes people are the real monsters. 

The second was, _holy shit I hope I don’t die._

He leaps right for the troopers, swinging his bat. As though he watching his hands through a TV screen, he sees himself fighting the troopers. Sound is oddly muffled, coming from far away or through water. 

And then pain explodes in his side. Sound returns in a rush—a gunshot, Nancy’s scream, Jonathan shouting his name. 

Then the world fades grey, and Steve faints.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *quietly chants* one more chapter! one more chapter! one more chapter!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did as I promised, and posted this first thing in the morning. Well, first after coffee.

“Steve. Steve. Wake up.” 

Bright light punches him in the eyeball. His ears ring, and his side throbs. Above him, Nancy slowly comes into focus. 

“Wha’ happen?” Steve slurs.

“It’s okay. It’s all okay now.” 

Steve tries to sit up, floundering with all four limbs, but quickly lays back down at the sharp pain in his side. When he grabs it, his fingers come away drenched in hot blood. “Am I shot?”

“I think it just grazed you.” She chews on the corner of her lip.

“Jonathan?” 

“He’s fine.” She motions down the hall, where Jonathan is kneeling in front of a boy with a buzzcut and big, scared eyes. 

For a moment Steve sees both Will and El in that boy, exhausted and fearful and powerful beyond their own comprehension. 

Steve looks over his shoulder at the closed double doors. “The door?”

“Yeah, Jonathan got them open.”

“The guards?”

Nancy hesitates. “That was all you, Steve. You saved us.”

He glances from her to Jonathan and the child and back to her. “Now what do we do?”

“We have to get you out of here.”

“M’fine.” He pushes off his left arm to lean his back against the wall. His side screams in protest. 

“There are more bad guys coming.”

“Ah shit.” He tries to think, tries to _breathe_ , but all that happens is his side throbs. 

“Nance.” Jonathan motions her over and she leaves with a pressure to Steve’s hand. 

While her back is turned, he cautiously lifts his shirt away from his ribs. It doesn’t look like a bullet wound to his uneducated eye, more like a deep gash. Blood trickles down his stomach to his jeans, where a dark stain is quickly forming. His shirt is already trashed. Pressure relieves bleeding, right? He rolls up the hem of his shirt to press to the wound.

It’s all he can do to keep from screaming. 

He’s such a wimp. 

“Okay, let’s go,” Jonathan says.

Steve doesn’t know when he squeezed his eyes shut in pain, but he pries them open now to look at Jonathan, who bends down to raise him to his feet. Why is it always Jonathan carrying him when he’s injured? 

They stagger down the hallway, Steve pressing his now soaking hem to the wound. Ahead of them, children in hospital gowns lead Nancy. 

The first person they meet is a lab-coated scientist, who panics, tripping as he turns to run. One child extends their hand, and the scientist falls to the ground, no longer breathing. 

Terrifying. 

They make it out of the building like that, and Steve can do nothing as these little children defend them from bad guy after bad guy, brutally killing them. These children walk past the bodies of people they murdered without a second glance. 

It horrifies him.

“How you doing buddy?” Jonathan asks.

Steve grunts, pulling his hand away from his side. It is slick with blood, his shirt soaked completely through. He catches only the corner of Jonathan’s worried look. 

Every step down the hall sends sharp knives of pain up and around his torso. He has no idea how much blood he’s lost. A lot. Probably enough that he should be worried. 

They make it out of the building and that’s when things get fuzzy. There are police and people and flashing lights, but mostly Steve remembers Jonathan helping him to the car, broad hands gentle and steady. They take him to the hospital. It’s a quiet ride. Nancy’s jaw is locked, and Jonathan white-knuckles both hands on the wheel. 

Steve would tell them he’s fine, but blood has spread through most of his shirt now, and he’s light-headed, like that time he ran too many laps without stopping, or like when he snuck a bunch of children underground to light a fucking monster on fire. 

Jonathan helps him into the E.R., where he is immediately herded into a little room while Nancy and Jonathan are shooed away. 

They give him pain meds before they clean him up. Turns out the bullet only grazed him, but it still takes a fuckton of stitches to close it. He loses track of time. 

When they release him to the waiting room, he walks slowly in, and Nancy stands, crying, “Oh my God, Steve!” She wraps him in a hug, careful not to press too close. She’s been crying. “You could have died,” she whimpers into his neck.

“But I didn’t,” he says helpfully.

“You idiot.” She steps back from him, keeping one hand on his upper arm.

Jonathan hugs him next, and there’s no hesitation as he pulls Steve to his broad chest. “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again, man.” 

“Yeah yeah.”

“You’re a hero,” says Nancy. “My hero.” 

“Ours,” says Jonathan.

Steve looks away, blushing. “Whatever. What happened to the kids?”

“They’re fine. Getting sent home.”

“Good.” 

They stand there for a moment longer, tension between them. It’s like there’s something unsaid, hanging right in front of them, and Steve can’t quite see it. 

Nancy heaves a deep sigh. “Let’s go.” 

Steve nods, exhaustion hitting him like a freight train. “Yeah.” 

Back at the hotel, Steve takes a slow shower and gets a clean shirt. And then he sleeps deeply, for a very long time.

When he wakes, Nancy is there, bathed in the pale light of the morning, reading. “Hey,” she says gently. “Jonathan went to get food.”

“Cool.” His mouth feels like it’s coated in sandpaper. 

“We figured we could stay here for another day, take it easy.” She’s looking at him with her brows curled into question marks, her eyes scanning his face. 

“I’m fine,” he grumbles. 

She rolls her eyes. “You were shot, Steve.”

The hotel room door swings open. Jonathan comes in, balancing three Styrofoam plates on his arms, stacked high with scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit, and holding three steaming cups of dark coffee. 

Nancy takes her cup from him in both hands and cups it to her face, inhaling. 

“Thanks, man,” Steve says as he takes a plate and balances it on his knees. 

Jonathan hovers at the foot of Steve’s bed. “How you feeling?”

“Fine.”

He ducks down, comes up with the camera. “Smile for me.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but obliges with his mouth full. Jonathan clicks the camera and appears from behind it, smiling warmly, crinkles at the corner of his eyes. 

“Glad you’re okay, buddy.” He moves his camera in his hands, like the admission means much more than he actually said.

“Yeah, whatever.” It suddenly hits him right then, that this is over. Not just their trip or the summer, but _this_. These moments of the three of them all together, of being friends. Nancy and Jonathan are going to leave soon. 

And Steve will go back to Hawkins and try to figure out his shit. Without Nancy and Jonathan. He sighs.

“What?” asks Nancy.

Steve shrugs, keeping his face blank. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Steve.” There’s an edge to her voice, affectionate and determined. 

He pokes at his eggs with his fork. “I just…the trip’s almost done, y’know. That’s all.”

Nancy slides a glance at Jonathan. “Do you want to go back?”

Steve stops chewing, gestures with his fork. “I mean we have to. You two are going off to college and I’ll just be there. For the kids, y’know.” He schools his features into careful emptiness. 

“But what do you want to do?” Jonathan asks flatly.

Leave it to Jonathan to know exactly what he’s not saying. “I’ll figure it out.”

“No, Steve,” he insists. “What do you want?”

 _I want you. I want you both._ He sighs. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

“Tell me the truth,” Nancy insists.

He sets down his fork on the edge of the Styrofoam plate. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says quietly, almost whispering.

Again, Nancy and Jonathan trade glances. 

“I mean, you’re going away to have amazing adventures and I’m just stuck in Hawkins. Doing exactly what I didn’t want to.”

“Why don’t you just leave?” Jonathan asks.

“Where would I go? Who would I go with?”

“You could come with us,” Jonathan says quietly.

“We’re getting an apartment,” Nancy adds. “You can join us there.”

He rolls his eyes, scoffs. “I can’t keep third wheeling you two for the rest of my life.”

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, letting out a breath. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this now.” 

Jonathan jerks, resurfacing from some deep thought. He and Nancy share a heavy, layered look, and it hurts Steve that he’s left out.

They finish breakfast in silence.

*

It turns out they have to go to the police station and fill out a ton of paperwork. Some of it is about the lab, some of it is about themselves, and some of it is about the children. It takes them most of the day and is completely pointless anyway, since most of it will probably be mysteriously lost somewhere along the way. 

When they are done, it is early afternoon. 

“How about we go to the beach?” Nancy suggests. 

“I’ve never seen the ocean,” Jonathan says quietly. 

“That settles it,” Steve says. “Let’s go to the beach.”

They drive to the coastline, and there is the ocean, crashing against the big brown rocks. The wind whips Nancy’s hair all around her face, and she grins before racing through the sand to splash into the surf. 

Steve rolls up his jeans before strolling to join her. Jonathan takes a few pictures before carefully setting his camera in the car and joining them. 

The water rolls over their toes with rushing sounds. Over it, Nancy laughs, and Jonathan smiles at her, then at Steve. She raises her hands in the air and spins as the wave rolls over her feet and nearly up to her knees. Jonathan splashes to her and scoops her in his arms, draping her knees over one arm and wrapping around her back with the other. She wraps her arms around his neck and they smile before leaning in for a kiss. 

At first, Steve smiles at them, letting them have their moment, but then the kiss turns heated, and he wants to look away but at the same time something stirs low in his belly and he never wants to see anything else. 

He turns to look at the sun setting in the ocean, sending orange light across the waves. He wishes he could swim into it, and be swallowed by the warm golden water.

Behind him, Jonathan sets down Nancy. “Dinner?” he asks. 

“Wait!” shouts Nancy. “I have one more polaroid!” She sprints to the car and comes back, taking a final picture of the sunset on the beach. When it develops, she tapes it to the dash of the car, a soft smile hovering at the corners of her lips.

They get food and head back to the hotel, where Jonathan heads for a shower. 

Nancy stands over her suitcase, folding her clothes and packing them away for their drive back tomorrow. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” He shoves more clothes into his duffel. Surely they all fit when he packed it the first time?

“No you’re not.” He realizes she’s right behind him, and he turns around slowly, looking down into her wide eyes. 

He could drown in those eyes. 

“Steve—” She reaches up a hand to his shoulder, wrapping her arm around the back of his neck. 

“Nancy?” he stutters. 

And then she rises up and she kisses him. 

She kisses him, and _God_ , it feels like coming home. Her lips are soft, moving against his, and she tastes like the ocean and sunshine and he pulls her closer deepening the kiss, furrowing his brown at the intensity and he wants to cry because he’s wanted this, he’s wanted this for so long—

“No!” Steve breaks away, lurching backwards and wiping his mouth.

“Steve,” she says, soft and desperate and broken.

“You broke up with me for him and now—”

“Steve, it’s not like that—”

“And now you’re cheating on him with me!”

“No!”

“I won’t let that happen, Nancy! I won’t let you do that to yourself. Or him.”

“Steve, please.”

“What?” He runs his hand through his hair.

“It’s not—Steve, I—I want you. We want you, Steve.”

He blinks. The silence pulses around him as she looks up with questioning eyes. In the bathroom, the water shuts off.

“I can’t do this.” Steve leaves the room swiftly, grabbing the keys on his way out. 

He drives aimlessly around the town. When he parks at the hotel, he can’t bring himself to go back up to the room. So he spends the night sleeping restless and fitful in the back seat. His side aches a little bit, but he ignores it. 

Nancy’s words loop endlessly in his mind.

_We want you, Steve._

_We want you._

_We want._

_We._

_You._

*

Steve opens the door quietly, feeling like he might intrude upon something. Nancy and Jonathan are slumped together on the end of the bed, his arm over her shoulders. They both look up when he enters.

He stands there for a minute, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “I’m sorry for leaving last night. That was shitty of me.”

Nancy stands, crosses to him, reaches for him, and aborts the motion. “It’s okay, Steve,” she murmurs. “It’s okay.”

Jonathan joins her. “She meant it—what she said.”

Steve’s stomach flips, and he feels like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice. “What?” he manages.

They are standing shoulder to shoulder, a united front. 

“We want you, Steve,” Nancy says, and she reaches for his hand. 

“The three of us,” Jonathan motions in a circle between them, “we’re better together.”

Steve’s whole world is tipping. Surely he must be dreaming. “I…but I…”

Nancy tugs gently, and he steps closer. “You’re not going to lose us. No matter what you do.”

Steve feels like he’s stepped closer to the edge of that cliff, and now he’s looking at the drop.

“We’re yours—and we want you to be ours.” Jonathan looks into his eyes, and gently cups Steve’s jaw with his hand.

Steve looks between the two of them for a moment, and both of them, _both of them_ , are looking back at him with such _warmth_ and _love_ , and he almost doesn’t know what to do. 

He looks over the precipice one last time. He leans forward, takes the last step over the edge, and Jonathan’s mouth is warm against his as he falls.

*

Hours later, when they are all lying flushed and loose-limbed in a pile (Jonathan spooning Steve spooning Nancy), and Steve feels warmer than he’s ever been, only then does he stop to think about the everything. He has a lot of questions—about the past, about the future—and then his stomach grumbles.

Jonathan chuckles (Steve feels it against his back), and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Steve whines at the loss of warmth. 

Jonathan chuckles again, searching the floor for his boxers and pants. “Hey, I’m doing you a favor, I’m going to get us food!” 

Nancy wriggles away from him, and Steve is left alone in the bed. He spreads his arms out to either side. “But now I’m all alone here!” He sticks out his lip in a pout.

Both Nancy and Jonathan, in various stages of undress, stop and consider him. Nancy licks her lips, and Jonathan’s eyes visibly dilate, and Steve gets a warm fluttery feeling in his belly that he can make them feel that way. 

Jonathan shakes his head. “Food,” he says firmly. “Then…” he waves in Steve’s general direction. “That.” He swallows hard. 

Steve smirks, putting both his hands behind his head. 

Nancy throws a shirt at him. “Stop being obscene and put this on.” 

“Why, am I too much for you?” He starts pulling the shirt over his head.

She rolls her eyes. “Just put on the shirt.” The box of gauze bounces off his forehead. “And change your dressing! You need to take care of yourself!”

The shirt doesn’t fit him quite right, and then he realizes it’s _Jonathan’s_ shirt. 

“Nance, are you trying to kill me?” Jonathan says.

Steve gets that warm fluttery feeling again. Before he knows what’s happening, Jonathan has snapped a photo. “Hey!”

He shrugs. “Too good to miss.” He turns the camera in his hands. “If you want…if you want, we can take more. Later.” 

Steve smiles. He has a feeling he knows what sort of pictures they’ll be taking later. “Sure. Absolutely. Anything.”

Jonathan sets down the camera and crawls onto the bed in front of Steve. “Anything, huh?”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly. “For you.”

Jonathan’s tongue flicks over his lips, and then he is leaning in and kissing Steve slowly, lingering on his lower lip, adding the barest hint of teeth, and there’s a thousand unsaid words behind it all, such a deep well of pent-up longing and tenderness, that Steve forgets how to breathe.

Nancy beans them with a pair of jeans. “Put these on, I’m hungry.”

Jonathan turns, looking affronted. “Jesus, Nance, give us a second!”

She giggles. “Sorry. Except I’m _really_ hungry.” 

“Okay, okay.” Steve hauls himself out of the bed. 

“How do pancakes sound?” Jonathan says. “I think I saw an iHop nearby.”

So they all get ridiculously sugary fluffy pancakes absolutely drenched in whipped cream and syrup, and God, Steve loves them both so much. On the table, his fingers are linked with Nancy’s, and under the table, his ankle is hooked with Jonathan’s, and Steve thinks his heart might burst.

There is time, and back in the hotel there is a bed, and in the parking lot there is a car, and there is Nancy and Jonathan and Steve, and the world is at their fingertips. 

He thinks, _it’s a miracle. It’s a goddamn fucking miracle._ It’s a miracle that they are alive, that they survived, that they made it this far. And it’s a miracle that Nancy is laughing through her mouth full of pancakes and Jonathan is smiling into his coffee and then they both look at Steve and. And that’s a miracle too. 

When they pull out of town it will be forward into the sun, and it will be the three of them, together, finally, and a beautiful future awaits them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the end. I'ver truly enjoyed every minute of this. It's been a joy to write and I thank everyone for their support and sweet words. Thanks so much!

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi to me on [tumblr!](http://www.stillusesapencil.tumblr.com)


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